The glorious Win-Tel alliance upon which the sun never set, appears to be crumbling from within, according to IHS iSuppli analyst Craig Stice.

He said in a report that the willingness of Intel and Microsoft to work together is also fraying as each company increasingly adopts strategies "that work against each other's interests. Stice claimed that the days of the pair marching shoulder to shoulder, dominating the PC market with their closely tied operating system and microprocessor technologies were fading.

The strategy has begun to change in visible ways during the mobile era. This is despite surface appearances that indicate once-mighty Wintel is still pretty mighty, actually.

But going forward and if current trends hold, both Microsoft and Intel stand to lose a good deal of their market share in operating systems and microprocessors, respectively, the analyst said. Wintel is expected to suffer a declining share of the 'new' computer market, a category consisting not just of PCs but also of the much faster-growing smartphone and media tablet segments," Stice added.

Microsoft had a 44 percent share of the OS market for PCs, tablets, and smartphones in 2011, according to IHS iSuppli. This could fall to a third in 2016, the research firm predicted. Intel's projected market share decline over that same period follows a similar line—from 41 percent of the global microprocessor market to 29 percent, according to IHS iSuppli.

If such a market share decline for Wintel does come to pass, however, it might not actually affect the numbers of units shipped by the two tech giants much at all. For example, IHS iSuppli forecast that the total size of the microprocessor market will double from 2011 to 2016, meaning Intel could lose a lot market share and still wind up moving more chips than ever.

Speaking at the shareholders meeting on Tuesday, TSMC’s CEO Morris Chang said that the company is cautious when it comes to the US economy, since it has recovered at a slower rate than expected.

Chang based his opinion on a number of indicators, including employment data. Furthermore, he acknowledged that the EU crisis won’t make things any easier.

TSMC’s North American clients account for as much as 70 percent of the company’s wafer sale revenue. This pretty much sums it up when it comes to importance of this market, and at the same time puts TSMC’s concern in perspective.

For the year 2011, TSMC reported net profits of NT$134.2 billion on consolidated revenues of NT$427.08 billion. The company’s earnings, gross margins and operating margins all dropped in 2011 compared to the year before - by 17, 4 and 4.8 percent, respectively. The company’s consolidated revenues for 2011 are up by 9.2 percent compared to 2010.

Analysts are not impressed by Nokia’s first Windows Phone handsets and their expectations are rather low by smartphone standards.

How low? Well, Bernstein Research believes Nokia will shift no more than 500,000 units of its flagship Lumia 800. Pacific Crest originally expected sales of about 2 million by Christmas, but it has now revised its estimate to, you’ve guessed it, 500,000.

Bernstein analysts reckon Nokia’s Lumia phones are not competitively priced and they lack any breakthrough innovation. Analyst Pierre Ferragu believes the Lumia 800 could turn out to be a dud and it simply does not have what it takes to take on Apple or Android phones.

The floods were another nail in the coffin for the company which is struggling with a high yen and sluggish television sales in the U.S. and Europe. That is even before the embarrissing hack of its Playstation network earlier this year.

Sony reduced its forecast for TV sales by almost a tenth to 20 million sets. It is the outfit's eighth straight annual loss in its TV division and the company is revamping the unit.

The revised forecast of 20 billion yen ($255 million) for the year ending in March compares with its previous estimate of 200 billion $2.5 billion in profit and market expectations of a 166 billion yen profit.

Rumors from the Far East indicate that things are not well with Intel's Ultrabook plans.

DigiTimes claims that Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba and Asustek are limiting the initial shipment volumes to below 50,000 units due to uncertain demand. The vendors are scheduled to begin shipping their ultrabook models later this month.

Intel is hosting a conference for ultrabooks next week in the hopes of getting more enthusiasm for the specification. However it seems that Chipzilla has not been able to convince its manufacturing partners to reduce the costs of the beasts and be a little more keen.

Intel introduced the ultrabook design specifications in May. The new laptops are meant to incorporate "tablet-like features" with a "thin, light and elegant design" without compromising on computing power and performance. The big idea was that they should remain in the sub-$1,000 price range.

Sources tell us that RIM’s new partnership with Microsoft is more than just Bing on PlayBook. Whispers that we hear seem to indicate that talks are currently on the way to bring Office to Playbook. Before you get too excited, it is hard to say right now how this would be implemented.

Currently, no one seems to know if this will be native applications that run on the PlayBook, or if instead it would take advantage of Microsoft’s new Office web offerings. What seems to be a bit more interesting, however, is the suggestion that some sort of version of Outlook might be the new replacement mail application for the PlayBook.

No one seems to know how the pricing would work, or whether it would instead be installed on the PlayBook as a trial that would require some sort of payment to fully activate it for use. No matter: we have to believe that the entire thing spills into the rumors that Microsoft intends to offer Office for the ARM processors to go along with Windows.

Office for PlayBook might just end up being a head start on that strategy for Microsoft. Expect this story to get much hotter in the next could of months, as the two companies figure out the right way to make this happen.